David Shepherd (producer)
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David Shepherd (1926-) is an American producer, director, and actor primarily noted for his work in improvisational theatre
Born in New York City to an old money family, Shepherd grew up with left-leaning sensibilities. He studied English at Harvard and received an M.A. in the History of Theater at Columbia. Disenchanted with what he perceived as a European dominated theater on the East Coast, Shepherd gravitated to the Midwest.[1]
I wanted to rejuvenate the theater. My first love was the theater, which I found had been captured by Giraudoux and Shaw and Ionesco, who would come in and turn it into a distorted picture of life. Instead of being about what's happening in the streets of Chicago, it was about love affairs in Nice which took place fifty years ago. And I thought it was obscene for the theater to be dominated by French and English people. I mean, obscene. I mean, I'm a Yankee. I'm a W.A.S.P.. I want a W.A.S.P. theater, OK? And you can't get it on the East Coast because it's dominated by European culture. So you go to the Midwest, which is what I did.
– David Shepherd, Something Wonderful Right Away
In 1953 Shepherd was one of the co-founders of the Playwrights Theatre Club in Chicago. In 1955 he founded the Compass Players, the forerunner of The Second City. More recently he has been a co-creator of the Canadian Improv Games. In addition to leading workshops in Improvisation, David Shepherd has recently been involved in developing techniques for the creation of improvisational films with his partner, Nancy Fletcher. David has written a book entitled, The Movie in Your Mind, about this process of movie making. David resides near Amherst, MA.
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[edit] Notes
- ^ Sweet, Jeffrey Something Wonderful Right Away: An Oral History of the Second City and The Compass Players, 2004, page 2
[edit] Bibliography
- Shepherd, David (2005). That Movie in Your Head: Guide to improvising stories on video. Shutesbury, MA: Gere Publishing, 202 pages. ISBN 0-9743995-0-7.
[edit] Further reading
- Coleman, Janet (1991). The Compass: The Improvisational Theatre that Revolutionized American Comedy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 362 pages. ISBN 978-0226113456.
- Sweet, Jeffrey (2004). Something Wonderful Right Away: An Oral History of the Second City and The Compass Players. Limelight Editions, 386 pages. ISBN 978-0879100735.
